Asexuality Essay

784 Words2 Pages

Reclamation of language often facilitates the process of creating community and developing a strong sense of self -- this is explicitly the case for individuals who identify as asexual. Asexuality is an identity typically stable from childhood but finally labeled in later young adulthood via exploring what it means to not experience sexual desire or will to engage in sexual intercourse through the internet (Scherrer 621). The word itself itself is a combination of the prefix ‘a’ meaning ‘not’ or ‘without’ and the noun ‘sexuality’, translating into being without sexual desires -- it is important to note that such direct definitions are not to suggest that sexual desires are innate. The rise of people who identify as asexual is due to the emergence …show more content…

Rather than only being based in behavior or desire, asexuality demands acknowledging that an investment in exploring the sociopolitical implications of identities is equally important to define sexaulity (Scherrer 622). Discourses uplifting asexuality also aid respecting and distinguishing between choosing to not engage in sexual experiences and never wanting to engage in sexual experiences at all and nuances about rejecting sex but still wanting to experience love. The difference between celibacy and asexuality is of paramount significance because narratives about celibacy can be utilized to silence and delegitimize those of asexual folks. Similarly so is general confusion about how can someone want engage romantically with a partner while not wanting to engage in intercourse for asexual folk which again serves to legitimize the authenticity of asexual identity -- deleterious but at least spurring conversations that online asexual resource guides aimed to do with their inception (Scherrer 633). It is, ultimately, through this confusion that people can learn about and learn how to respect …show more content…

During my primary education, I frequently found myself offended when prompted to bubble the 'Black ' box on standardized tests, annual applications for our school’s district 's free lunch program, and anonymized online surveys. Blackness correlated to criminality to me, it was undesirable even if it took an amorphous structure, due to what images of Black representation reflected to me at that time. Blackness in the media did have a gleam of positivity when showcased in characters and moral lessons of children’s shows; yet, in works targeted towards adult audiences that I would view when my mother had authority over my home’s single remote control, Black people not only fictive villains in dramas but also thieves and suspects on daily news reels. I internalized this proliferation of implied evilness of and a younger me even thought that light-skin or racial ambiguity could be the redemptive quality to free myself from society’s articulations of Blackness (Scherrer 622). However, as an ethnic Moroccan, Nigerian, and African American only my caramel skin could offer me a separation from the stereotypes I so desperately wanted to

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